


The Blowfish and the Octopus

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Bruises, Drowning, M/M, Other, Power Dynamics, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-09
Updated: 2013-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-28 17:06:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The electric red alert cry for air in Jesse's lungs tells him that he should get up, walk away, and never come back--but he never does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blowfish and the Octopus

**Author's Note:**

> An anon asked me for tentacle!walterxjesse fic and who am I to deny the greatness of such a prompt?

It’s funny, Jesse thinks, it’s funny how water makes everything look weightless. Like the way he kicks his feet and floats backwards, caressed gently by the current, like the way his shirt cuffs pull away from his wrists—like the way the little swathes of his hair float like feathers curling in sunshine--

Mr. White used to have hair, when he first knew him. Now he’s bald and the water breaks into wavering, fractured beams of light against his skin while his tentacles spread from him like hands reaching and reaching and reaching for him, for Jesse, and it’s like

it’s like whoa how everything is so light

but the water pushes down on his shoulders like a fucking slab of concrete, like some anchors away shit, like his lungs are being squeezed by iron fists, like the way his mom used to wring out the sponges after dinner (he imagines she still does this but it’s been a long fucking time since he'd been invited over so maybe she’s using washcloths now who the fuck knows or cares really come on).

He kicks his shoes off because he remembered reading on the internet that’s that’s something you should do, tries to kick his feet and push up towards the just there barely out of reach surface, waiting to break sun-splintered water, but something’s tugging on his foot, something's squeezing and sucking on the hard bone of his ankle, tugging him down under a veil of bubbles, deeper and heavier where the sun struggles to break through.

Mr. White rarely speaks below the ocean, but Jesse sees the set edge of his jaw, the almost snarled up sneer of his mouth--his glasses with their chipped and missing lenses, the waterproof tape already peeling off from where he’d try to fix them up good, because fucking advertisers don’t know shit, man—

Another tentacle’s grabbed his other ankle, another for a wrist so that he can’t dog paddle to the surface, and now his chest just burns and burns and burns.

They’re face to face now, and Jesse opens his mouth to shout, you dick, you fucking dick, let me go—tries to push him away but the tentacles keep his arms apart so he can’t punch, keeps his legs apart so he can’t kick, and Mr. White stands aloof from Jesse and all his tentacles, finger tapping the face of his busted up watch, the one with the air bubble trapped under the glass, the one that doesn’t even keep fucking time anymore, and it’s like, what the fuck does he think he’s saying, that he can keep time better than a watch while he’s going to fucking drown—

Then Mr. White just tosses him up so hard that water runs up his nose and he’s coughing, coughing so hard as his mouth floods and his lungs flood and he finally breaks through, gasping as Mr. White slams him hard into the wooden dock, bruising his shins as he scrabbles to his knees, coughing and throwing up the water a little bit, until he falls onto his side, wipes his nose with his wrist. He’s got red and blue suckered around his ankles, around his wrists. He wears a lot of long sleeves now, even though it hides his tattoo.

He can only see Mr. White’s head and shoulders and a bit of old man flab chest, but he’s there, watching Jesse gasp.

A tentacle breaks through the water, holding one of Jesse’s kicked off shoes. He tips it over, pours out the water and the mud and the sludge. “Really, Jesse?”

Jesse hates the way his skin flushes hot underneath his goose bumps. “Hey, fuck you. I was panicking because you wouldn’t let me up.”

“Because I knew you could stay down longer, Jesse. You just needed the right—motivation.”

“I almost fucking drowned!” His hands shake. He wants a cigarette bad.

“You stayed under a full minute longer than you ever had before.”

He tries to pound out the fluttering hurt-gasp from inside his rib cage with his fist. “I don’t care, man, I could have drowned.”

“You wouldn’t have drowned, Jesse.” Mr. White takes his glasses off, shakes the water from the lenses. “Not while I’m here.”

He flops down on his back, hands over his eyes, heart jumping. Wants to say that what if Mr. White misjudges, what if—but he’d just have an answer for that, he always did. Something scientific. 

“Jesse—“

Jesse rolls over, braces himself on his elbows. “How long you think I could hold it? Three minutes?”

Mr. White says nothing, just tips his head up.

“Four minutes? Five?”

“Anything’s possible, Jesse. If you put your mind to it.”

Then he’s gone, slipping beneath the water, leaving it swirling and churning in his wake. 


End file.
